Mixing Formats

[Drew Hoffman]

If there's a similar thread somewhere else, I'd love to be able to read that. I just have not been able to find anything so far that helps with what I'm trying to figure out.

 

I'm getting ready to shoot a piece that utilizes HD for some scenes and super 16 (w/ 7217). After telecine, it's most likely that it will stay in the digital world and would only be projected in a film festival type situation.

 

My concern is this:

I've never mixed formats before and I was wondering how other people had handled this in past situations and how successful that turned out. I'd like to know if there's anything special I need to keep in mind while shooting. Although we're using it to establish different visual looks for the specific scenes... I want to make sure that once it's cut together, it doesn't look super funky or distracting at all.

 

Thanks!

[Michael Nash]

Well if it's to create different looks, then I guess it's up to you to decide what's "different enough" and what's "super funky or distracting." That's really a matter of degree and personal taste (in conjunction with the style you plan to shoot both).

 

To that end, I would test the film first, since its image characteristics like range, color, and grain are pretty fixed under nominal shooting conditions (use that as baseline reference for any deviation in filtration, exposure and processing). Then, test the HD the same way to learn what its limits are and how they compare with the film. From that you can draw your own conclusions about the differences and how to minimize or maximize them.

 

You'll probably be able to tweak the look of the HD in camera much more than you can the film, so that's probably where you'll want to focus your efforts in testing. Keep in mind that you have the most quality control over both sources before the image goes through any format compression, so be sure to test those boundaries separately from what you can do in post.

 

Oh, and watch out for synch-sound issues if you're shooting 24.00 fps film and 23.98 fps HD side-by-side but sharing a common sound recording, since the film will go through a slight speed change to 23.98 during telecine.